Towns of Soria, Spain: Castillejo de Robledo

They say-and please, do not ask me if the languages that insist on it are good or bad-that Castillejo de Robledo is the coldest town in Spain. I do not know if it is true, but I do know that in the summer, during the heat, in the field they can not stand even the locusts, which of heat they must understand, because as a plague they were sent by God to Egypt, as an ultimatum to liberation of the Israelite slaves.

Besides, does not this phenomenon occur in the deserts, where the sun is an incendiary furtive for the day and Selene acts as a fireman at night, giving hoses of frost, which freeze the soul?

They say, too, that one of the most shameful Cidian episodes of the Cantar de Mío Cid was developed here: that of the outrage of the daughters of Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar by the Counts of Carrión, a fact that is known as the Afrenta de Corpes.

But that is, perhaps, even more controversial, so that with the approval of you, 'I will be silly', and with your approval, I drop it simply as an anecdote, before the historical demons of Nero are resurrected and destined as despoliation to the academic lions.

What seems plausible, although the documentary legitimacy, as usual, shines by its absence, is that Castillejo de Robledo - notice that already in his name a certain Celtic pedigree is noticed - had in the past a more than close relationship with that medieval order of 'monks with spurs', who were the Knights Templar (1).

Apart from the tradition and the legend of Vallejo Caballero (2), also in Castillejo de Robledo, as in San Pedro Manrique, there is sufficient evidence-no matter how circumstantial it may seem a priori-that lead to suspect an undoubtedly real presence.

Independently of the small and desmochada fortress that dominates the town like a hawk, to whose vera it flows, forming a sickle to the exit of the same, the small highway that in a little less seven kilometers leaves us in another site where its presence is also confirmed, Maderuelo and the hermitage of Vera Cruz (3), the Romanesque church of Nuestra
Señora de la Asunción (13th century), already warns us in this regard.

Unlike the covers of most of the temples of his time and style, made of stone, the cover of the church of Castillejo de Robledo, disconcertingly, is made of stucco wood and still retains an interesting part of its original polychrome. A material and a cover, very similar to the one that can be seen, suspiciously, in another Romanesque church located on the outskirts of Requijada, in the vicinity of the famous Segovian town of Pedraza (4), whose invocation, no less curious, holds it Our Lady of the Vega.

Apart from a certain erotic theme in the corbels of its apse -frequently, tourists and curious look for those two couples who are practicing sex, or which comes to confirm, at least in part, the voyeurism that we all have inside- the interesting, Without a doubt, it is located inside.

As it could not be otherwise, given the belonging to an environment, where the Romanesque painting seems to have acquired extraordinary dimensions, the artistic remains that still survive inside the nave and the head, suggest that this supposedly Templar church of the Asunción, was once another small 'Sistine Chapel', whose brightness was eclipsed by lime, probably in some period between the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, when the great epidemics of plague ravaged the towns and cities of Old Europe.

On the left side of the ship, almost in front of the main entrance, hardly survives a small patch, which shows a soldier in the foreground and behind a walled city, which experts, anyone knows why, in reality, interpreted as an allusion to the Christian conquest of the city of Huesca.

There is evidence that, up to relatively modern times, there was also an imposing figure in this scene - perhaps a Templar warrior or possibly an Apollonian allusion to San Cristóbal, a figure that is still found in many cathedrals and churches, such as the of San Marcos de Salamanca, with a circular layout and with certain suspicions of having belonged to them at some point - unfortunately, now disappeared.

Now, the spectacular, that which shakes and immediately captures the attention, are the two impressive dragons, which surely suggesting an Ouroboros - a symbol not at all uncommon in temples or attributed to them - occupy, with an exceptional realism, the surface of the toral arch of the head of the church. A headboard, whose ceiling maintains, in an extraordinary degree of conservation, a kind of chessboard, in black and white squares, such as the Baucéant or standard of the Templars, in whose center you can appreciate the white background shield and the a black strip that divides it transversely, which is also located on the main stucco entrance to the temple.

Within the Marian imagery, two beautiful representations can be seen: a very interesting one, possibly from the 13th century, which still preserves the hieratic attitude of its Romanesque predecessors and another later and Gothic one, already made quite later.

There is also a private house that maintains in its façade, as an ornament, some corbels that could have belonged to the Church of the Assumption or, failing that, any other church or hermitage that has disappeared.

The village, located in the deepest part of the natural depression, has excellent views from the remains of the castle. Perspectives, obviously, from which you can appreciate this magnificent architecture, which has always characterized the small Castilian-Leonese communities.

[Hospital de la Fuenfría, Cercedilla, Madrid, Sunday, August 5, 2018]

Notes:

(1) That's what Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer called them and with that name, they appear in their spectacular legend El Monte de las Animas, set the Night of the Dead in Soria, capital.
(2) This legend refers to a treacherous Templar who murdered his Master and was condemned, after death, to wander these parts as an expiation of his guilt.
(3) Formerly, Maderuelo belonged to Soria, but from the seventeenth or eighteenth centuries, it became dependent on Segovia. La Vera Cruz is a small hermitage located outside the city walls, where the Knights templar veiled souls and guarded an important fragment of the Vera Cruz, hence the name of the hermitage. The marvelous Romanesque paintings of its interior, were about to be lost, when the National Hydrological Plan, promoted by the government of General Franco, approved the creation, in the place, of the Linares reservoir. However, to safeguard such a wonderful work of art, we proceeded to create a chapel identical to the original, to which were added the authentic frescoes, moving to the Prado Museum in Madrid.
(4) Famous, because for years, it was the place chosen to make the famous announcement of the Christmas Lottery.

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